By studying the yeast used in beer- and bread-making, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have uncovered the mechanism by which ancient proteins repair DNA damage and how their dysfunction could ...

The environment within a cell is a paradoxical balance of order and chaos. Proteins, DNA and countless other biological molecules tumble together in a wildly turbulent system that somehow holds together to engender life.

The DNA molecule is chemically unstable giving rise to DNA lesions of different nature. That is why DNA damage detection, signaling and repair, collectively known as the DNA damage response, are needed.

How does our body keep its DNA intact? Researchers at Erasmus MC have just found a new piece of this puzzle. They discovered a novel alarm that cells use to signal DNA damage. "We already knew that DNA damage triggers an ...

If DNA is the cookbook of life, then RNA is the scratch paper where the cell writes down its favorite recipes. These recipes could make the pigments of your skin, the vehicles that carry oxygen through your veins, or the ...

During each cell division, more than 3.3 billion base pairs of genomic DNA have to be duplicated and segregated accurately to daughter cells. But what happens when the DNA template is damaged in such a way that the replication ...

DNA can be damaged by different environmental insults, such as ultraviolet light, ionizing radiation, oxidative stress or certain drugs. If the DNA is not repaired, cells may begin growing uncontrollably, leading to the development ...

Researchers have discovered that a cascade activation of several molecules triggered by the ATM protein regulates DNA repair during the production of spermatocytes by meiosis, the cell division process which yields spermatozoa.

The DNA molecule is chemically unstable, giving rise to DNA lesions of various kinds. That is why DNA damage detection, signaling and repair, collectively known as the DNA damage response, are needed. The DNA damage response ...

DNA repair

DNA repair refers to a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors such as UV light and Radiation can cause DNA damage, resulting in as many as 1 million individual molecular lesions per cell per day. Many of these lesions cause structural damage to the DNA molecule and can alter or eliminate the cell's ability to transcribe the gene that the affected DNA encodes. Other lesions induce potentially harmful mutations in the cell's genome, which affect the survival of its daughter cells after it undergoes mitosis. Consequently, the DNA repair process is constantly active as it responds to damage in the DNA structure.

The rate of DNA repair is dependent on many factors, including the cell type, the age of the cell, and the extracellular environment. A cell that has accumulated a large amount of DNA damage, or one that no longer effectively repairs damage incurred to its DNA, can enter one of three possible states:

The DNA repair ability of a cell is vital to the integrity of its genome and thus to its normal functioning and that of the organism. Many genes that were initially shown to influence lifespan have turned out to be involved in DNA damage repair and protection. Failure to correct molecular lesions in cells that form gametes can introduce mutations into the genomes of the offspring and thus influence the rate of evolution.